Dr. Seuss’s work for adults includes some pretty unambiguously racist images. Husband-and-wife team Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens, who run the Conscious Kid Social Justice Library, developed a study of Dr. Seuss’s history of racism that features a small sampling. For decades, the works of Dr. Seuss (real name Theodor Seuss Geisel) have been considered both iconic childhood classics and bastions of liberalism. They are lauded for their celebration of all that makes us different, and Seuss books like Horton Hears a Who and The Sneetches appear frequently in anti-racism curricula for children. These books are institutions in children’s literature, books that people dream about introducing their kids to. And now the progressive wing of the children’s literature world is working to find ways to situate those books in the landscape of children’s literature that will let kids appreciate them without getting blindsided by their racism.

The six books which contain the offensive imagery are And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot's Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat's Quizzer. Helen Palmer Geisel died in 1967. Theodor Geisel married Audrey Stone Diamond in 1968. Theodor Seuss Geisel died 24 September 1991. Reports about the decision came on the same day as the late author and illustrator's birthday, which is celebrated as Read Across America Day. Vox’s German Lopez is here to guide you through the Biden administration’s burst of policymaking. Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday. Dr. Seuss is one of the most beloved children’s authors in the country, and signed and first-edition Dr. Seuss books are valuable among book collectors. In addition, some collectors are known as completists, meaning they seek out every single published work by their favorite authors. And I Saw It On Mulberry Streetwas actually the first children’s book published by Dr. Seuss, which means it has intrinsic value for collectors.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2023-02-08 12:25:32 Associated-names Dr. Seuss Enterprises; Random House Children's Books Autocrop_version 0.0.14_books-20220331-0.2 Boxid IA40843409 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

The six titles were selected after consultation with a “panel of experts,” according to Dr. Seuss Enterprises. The books will no longer be printed or licensed, meaning that the titles will also not be available for sale as e-books. Here in McElligot's Pool, we find a farmer who says that the young fisherman will not catch fish in a small pool of water. In return, the young man speaks of possibilities. In this young person's imagination, the pool might yield many types of fish. Only when he follows his own imagination--we along with him--we discover a world of possibilities, a world teeming with possibilities. What a delightful book for children and those who read with them.Inuit people, aka Eskimos, really did wear coats with fur lining around their faces and build igloos. Maybe it’s the spear that’s stereotypical? Maybe it’s the fact the fish have fur around their faces? But there are still things for kids about Eskimos which rely on basically the same images. And Dr. Seuss’s interest in racial caricatures influences some of the rest of his work in ways that are no longer visible to casual readers — especially when it comes to the Cat in the Hat, that icon of Seussian madcap humor and surrealism. The six shelved books are all comparatively obscure works in the Seuss canon: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer. Beloved classics like The Cat in the Hat and Oh, the Places You’ll Go! remain untouched. But the decision, which caused enormous uproar across the right-wing infosphere, is part of a larger debate raging across the children’s literature community.

Gross, Jenny (March 2, 2021), "6 Dr. Seuss Books Will No Longer Be Published Over Offensive Images", The New York Times , retrieved March 2, 2021 Update: Called my wife and she remembered where our copy of McElligot’s Pool was. She also remembers it was one I read a lot to my son who is now 13. He’s here at home doing school but on his lunch break he confirms this was his favorite Dr. Seuss book. Again, since I can’t find my own copy I can’t verify there isn’t something else in it that someone may find offensive. If so, it’s odd that the study looking for such offenses didn’t flag it. From what I remember, this is a pretty great book for kids and one I’m sad to see go out of print under a cloud of racism.Over the past few years, Read Across America Day has been moving away from Dr. Seuss in its attempts to focus on more diverse books for children. Of the six, the problematic imagery in On Beyond Zebra! is probably the least obvious. The book catalogues a whimsical set of new letters in the alphabet, and briefly features the “Nazzim of Bazzim,” a figure of unspecified nationality riding a camel-like creature called a “Spazzim.” This story comes after And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street and revolves around the amazingly imaginative Marco. It does make for an interesting contrast between the wise, all-knowing farmer who warns Marco he'll never catch a fish in this solitary pool, and the imaginative enthusiasm Marco shows. It also provides Seuss with the opportunity to provide a geological lesson as well as one on the denizens of the sea. And lots of opportunities for Mom and the kids to exercise their own imaginations. Lord knows, Seuss was amazingly creative with the kinds of fish Marco thinks might be catchable.

Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises' catalog represents and supports all communities and families." Later in life, Geisel would pen several Dr. Seuss titles that would openly grapple with racism, most notably The Sneetches, which catalogues the travails of a bird-like species that enforces a rigid class structure based on which among them have stars on their bellies. The main character is a boy who decides to go fishing in McElligot’s Pool. An adult tells him that the pool is too small and nothing lives there so he’s wasting his time. Most of the book is made up of the child imagining how the small pool may be connected to the ocean underground and through this connection any number of unusual fish from around the world may in fact turn up in this small pool. The book is full of Seuss’s own imaginary creatures. Contrary to Fox News’s claims, neither the National Education Association nor Dr. Seuss Enterprises is attempting to cancel Dr. Seuss. The six remaindered books are obscure also-rans in his canon, and the rest of his much-beloved classics remain in print, in bookstores, and in school libraries. His books will still be taught in schools. He continues to be the rare author so iconic that his pen name is a literal brand name.There aren’t that many racial caricatures in Dr. Seuss’s children’s books, mostly because there aren’t that many nonwhite characters in Dr. Seuss’s children’s books. In their study, Ishizuka and Stephens counted 45 characters of color among the 2,240 human characters who appear in Dr. Seuss’s 50 books, which works out to just 2 percent. Notably, all of those characters are male. There are no girls or women of color in the Dr. Seuss canon. You may have heard by now that Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP, which manages the beloved author’s publishing interests, has decided to stop printing six of the author’s books. In a statement released on March 2, Dr. Seuss’s birthday, the organization said: In 1950, McElligot's Pool won the Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice Award, and in 1948, it won the Caldecott Honor. McElligot's Pool, Geisel's first book in seven years, [2] was published by Random House in 1947 and was well received. It became a Junior Literary Guild selection and garnered Geisel his first Caldecott Honor. [1]